Taxi driver acquitted of indecent assault charge

Press, 25 February 1988, Page 28

Taxi driver acquitted of indecent assault charge

A jury in the District Court early last evening acquitted a Christchurch taxi driver of a charge of indecently assaulting a young woman passenger he was driving from Cathedral Square to her flat in Woolston.

The defendant, Stephen Henry Dixon, aged 35, had denied the charge of indecent assault on the woman, aged 17, which was alleged to have occurred on the evening of September 24. Upon the jury’s verdict of not guilty, reached after a retirement of just over two hours, Judge Fraser discharged Dixon. He lifted an order for name suppression - which had been in force for the trial.

Mr K. N. Hampton, who appeared for the defendant, submitted to jurors that the girl had made up a mischievous allegation against the taxi driver, a man with no criminal record.

This had occurred, he contended because she had made the taxi driver the butt in her anger that her boyfriend, whom she had gone into the city to meet, had stood her up.

The complainant gave evidence of getting into the defendant’s taxi in Cathedral Square to be driven to her flat in Woolston.

She had gone into the city earlier to meet up with a male friend for the evening, but he did not

appear. During the journey, she said, he had placed his hand on her knee, put it between her legs, ripping her stockings, put it down the front of her dress, and again put it up her dress. After the second incident, she became hysterical, and had screamed.

She had pushed his hand away each time, and hit his face after one incident.

He stopped at her flat and she threw the money for the fare in his face. As she left the vehicle, he called that he would be back to get her. She reached her flat, unlocked it, and inside told her flatmate what had occurred. At her suggestion, she telephoned the taxi company, and after this telephoned the police. Cross-examined, the complainant said she was not angry that her friend did not meet her. She sat talking with her uncle, who was visiting Christchurch and had accompanied her into the city. She knew there would be some good reason her friend did not turn up. She agreed that when she arrived at her flat she told her flatmate she had been stood up, and then attacked by a taxi driver. The complainant denied she had made up the story of being attacked by the taxi driver, because of the mood she was in after being stood up by her friend.

The complainant’s flatmate gave evidence of the complainant’s arriving home earlier than intended, and saying she had been stood up by her friend and that a taxi driver had attacked her on the way home. The complainant was crying and shaken up and “sort of in a mess.” Medical evidence was given that an examination of the complainant later that evening showed a number of marks across her upper chest, consistent with scratches from a hand. There were similar marks across the complainant’s lower abdomen and her right inner thigh. The marks had not bled. The tears in the complainant’s stockings were in the same area as the scratch marks on her inner thigh. Constable M. J. Mortiaux gave evidence of questioning the defendant, and later taking a written statement from him. When asked if he had picked up a girl about 9 p.m. that evening, the defendant had replied: “Yes, has she made any allegations about me?” The defendant said she told him she was on holiday from Auckland. Told of the allegations the girl had made about him, the defendant told the detective he had not touched the girl at all.

He was not that sort of person, and would never do that to a woman no

matter who she was. He said he was upset that she would say those things about him. Two witnesses were called by the defence, and testified to the defendant’s good character. They were a company managing director, and a farmer. He was described as honest and not a devious person.

Mr Stanaway, in his final address for the Crown, said it would require incredible play-act-ing by the complainant to have self-inflicted her injuries after getting out of the taxi and before entering her flat, and to have maintained a false allegation of being attacked to the present. He suggested to jurors that the complainant had been a reliable witness, and the events occurred as she had told them.

, Mr Hampton, in his final address, referred to a number of what he termed disturbing features of the Crown’s case, particularly in the complainant’s evidence.

He contended that the complainant made up the allegations against the taxi driver for reasons of her own, no doubt connected with her being stood up that night by her boyfriend. Mr Hampton suggested that the complainant had made up a false and mischievous allegation, and made the defendant the butt of this.

He suggested her evi-

dence left too many unanswered queries, and had too many unsatisfactory features. She was not a credible witness.

Mr Hampton said the complainant had denied telling the defendant she was a visitor to Christchurch and telling him her sister’s occupation. Yet the defendant had told the constable when questioned, the sister’s occupation.

He said the first comment that should have come to mind when the complainant returned to her flat would have been to tell her flatmate she had been attacked by a taxi driver, not that she had been stood up by her boyfriend. The complainant had exaggerated her story when complaining to the taxi company dispatcher that the driver had tried to rape her. Mr Hampton said there was no evidence of scratches on the defendant’s face, and the injuries to the complainant were so superficial they could not be photographed by the police the next morning.

Counsel said that evidence was that the defendant’s taxi was stopped outside for several minutes while he wrote up the log of his trip, and the fare. This was consistent with nothing untoward having occurred in his driving the complainant home.